My first kit - Muntons Gold Imperial Stout

[oldpeculiar]

I have doing all-grain brewing with some friends but I thought I would try some kit brewing at home, so last Friday I did a Muntons kit. It went ok - I will upload a report and some fotos later today, but first I had two quick questions..

The beer has been in the fermentation vessel 8 days now. It has been swaddled with blankets in my bedroom, with a temperature in the room varying between 14 and 21 C, mainly about 16. I used Safale-04 yeast instead of the kit yeast (being worried that the latter might not work). I took two readings with the hydrometer yesterday both of which were something like 1020 (i find it hard to read the hydrometer precisely, my improvised plastic bottle trial jar might not help with that) and the beer tasted great, quite treacley. I gave the vessel a shake this morning just to rouse any yeast which is still active, although presumably it's almost all dead now.

Shall i syphon it to a barrel or should i leave it a few more days in the hope it will eventually drop to the 1014 reading which Muntons state?

When barrelling, should I add the 85grams light spraymalt that Muntons recommend? I haven't been doing this step when extract brewing.

Thanks for any advice!

[BrewerBoB]

Personally I've not been able to get any of my muntons kits past the dreaded 1.020 point. Last time I used filtered water, aerated the wort, used safale-04, added a teaspoon of nutrients and kept the brew at a constant 20-22 degrees and it still stuck. I gave up and racked it, I used quite a bit of light spraymalt for the seconfary fermentation and that brought the gravity up a little - a week later the gravity is back to 1.020 (indicating that all the fermentable sugar has gone??).

The beer tastes great but is way too sweet - I'm going to leave it another week, maybe two in the warm in case it decides to do something...

[oldpeculiar]

Personally I've not been able to get any of my muntons kits past the dreaded 1.020 point.

Hmm that's interesting. I decided to put mine in the barrel tonight so I could use the fermentation bucket for the next lot.. Hoping to be drinking the stout by Xmas!

[oldpeculiar]

Making the extract went quite well, the only comment i would really make was that i really learnt the importance of making sure that taps on buckets are closed! Whilst sanitising the buckets i kept on forgetting to check, with the result that the kicthen floor got a very good wash. There was generally quite a lot of warm water splashing about. Actually when i was sterilising for the second run tonight (alcoholic ginger beer here we come!) i used the bath instead, as there is more room for manoeuvre than with a tiny sink.

I put the fermentation bucket in my bedroom thinking that would be warm but in fact temperatures were quite low as it got colder outside, so from now on i will use the boiler room instead which seems to stay constant at 20 C.

Following the instructions from Muntons went ok, but I think if had been a compete novice I would have been quite confused. I don't like how it says on one bit of the label 'no sugar required' but then it the instructions suggest using sugar or spraymalt when bottling or barrelling.

Syphoning the beer tonight was a lot more tricky to do on my own than with a partner, and I managed to stop the flow a bit early, but then i put the rest into bottles, so it will be interesting to see if there is a different in taste between the barrel and the bottles.

All in all, I would say kit brewing is certainly easier than full grain, but the skills required are the same - organisation and forward planning!

Here are some fotos-

Two tins being warmed up-


The kitchen setup-


Sterilised implements-


The swaddled vessel (with books and stuff on top to prevent the cats from perching on it)-


Before syphoning-